When communicating on a radio channel, channel sensing and/or link adaptation can facilitate transmission reliability. As part of the channel sensing, transmission characteristics of the communication on the radio channel are determined. Example transmission characteristics can include a bit error rate (BER), a packet error rate (PER), etc. Link adaptation enables to control transmission properties used for transmitting on the radio channel. The transmission properties can thereby be tailored in view of current transmission characteristics. E.g., in a scenario where the communication reliability on the radio channel is degraded and comparably high BER is experienced, transmission properties such as the symbol modulation, transmission power, subframe length, etc. can be dimensioned conservatively to avoid excessive packet loss.
E.g., in the framework of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) 802.11x Wi-Fi protocol, probing packets are used to facilitate the estimation of the BER as part of channel sensing. However, it has been noticed that based on conventional techniques of employing probing packets, the BER can only be determined with limited accuracy.